No actually, Kristina, I’ve yet to see someone who doesn’t thrive on it, even those initially completely sure they will perish without the oatmeal breakfast…. And that makes sense evolutionarily. Of course ever person needs to vary their take on it as per where they live an there body’s preferences (as in some people do great with raw dairy, but many people do not).

Perhaps living in a cooler, drier climate helps ease the craving for juicy, tropical fruits? They do become an addiction, I have to admit ~ but at least I’m not craving cookies or brownies (used to be able to eat entire pans in one sitting).

Thanks so much for all the details and honest opinions, Kiva!

The short answer to your question is that while I think nearly everyone can benefit from lots of yummy raw food, especially greens, in their diet, that the raw diet is also very cold in nature and likely to cause constitutional imbalances in the long run. Also, the raw diet is often vegan by nature and almost always incredibly carb dense. If you read my above post as well as my other posts on nutrition you’ll see my problem with this. Basically, as romantic as raw can look from the outside, it is VERY common to find nutritional deficiencies even with monumental supplementation. It is my opinion that a truly healthy diet does not require vast amounts of supplements (although with the demineralized soil so common to agriculture and other aspects of industrial farming, it is definitely necessary to keep a close eye on nutrition regardless of how well you eat).

For me, I developed lots of symptoms of kidney yin and yang deficiency after a couple years of high raw (and that’s with still eating some cooked meat), including dizziness, nonstop headaches and worsened insulin troubles. It took me quite a while to get back in balance. I have several case studies of clients with very similar experiences.

I’m not into diet dogma, but I can say with confidence that a raw vegan diet is not one that human have evolved to eat long term. If you do decide to do raw, make sure you eat a very low percentage of fruit (especially highly hybridized, imported tropical fruit) and do TONS of greens and veggies. Too many raw foodists try to get the majority of their calories from fruit, and that is recipe for disaster.

For another perspective on long term vegan raw eating, check out beyondveg.com it’s very enlightening.

On the other hand, I find that many of the recipes from the raw food world are near genius for those of us avoiding grains. When I do eat sweets (very very rarely) I often use raw inspired recipes to make almond macaroons or cashew brownies etc. Of course, I cook mine rather than dehydrate them

I am loving your site! Your writing is delicious and inspiring!

I have been doing a great deal of research on the best way to eat and would love to hear about your experiences with raw food. I’m poised to go down that path and wonder what you encountered personally if you don’t mind sharing.

This site is a beautiful gift, I am still working my way through your posts….

No, I don’t eat meat at every meal, and I focus more on getting fat than protein generally, as that’s where a lot of the nutrition and satiation comes in.

The planet definitely can’t deal with all of us eating paleo style. In truth, I don’t believe that we can eat any which way, even our ideal way, in a larger scale ethical way. Hell, I’m not even sure it’s ethical for us all to be breathing right now.

There is a study that is a comparison of the Mediterranean diet (whole grains based) to Paleo and then to regula SAD diet I believe. I think they talk about it on Modern Forager, in which the Med diet is clearly more healthy than SAD but Paleo is significantly better (especially when it comes to diabetes) than Med. There might be more as well, if there are, they can likely be found on Modern Forager (Scott’s good that way). I’m not sure if the Med diet uses much in the way of fermented grains. If you’re going to eat grains that’s definitely the way to go.

While a few thousand years is definitely a more significant time period in which to develop tolerance than many people like the Maori or Apache, it’s still not much in the larger evolutionary scale, especially compared to how long we’ve been eating meat and greens in any part of the world.

I have plenty of meals that could be considered “vegetarian” in the sense they contain no meat, although considering how integral meat is to my diet, I would hesitate to even label my meals vegetarian

I’ll have to go find the book, but the Garden of Eating (subtitled a “A Produce Based Diet” that is basically paleo in nature with an emphasis on fresh produce) has a timeline of human history that talks about how the first significant dental caries and similar problems occurred in Scotland within a couple generations of the introduction of oats. That would have been whole oats, probably even fermented oats…

And I think the key to filling diet without much in the way of grains is in the fat. Fat is extremely filling (rabbit is great, but seriously lacking in the fat department) and even people who can’t tolerate fat on a normal diet tend to do well with it once they cut grains and most carbs from there diets.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that there’s one ideal diet (you should see the radically different meals that Loba, I, Rhiannon and Wolf each have, it’s kind of hilarious) but I do believe that our evolutionary diet is fairly clear, and that anyone creating an individualized diet for themselves would do well to keep it in mind, or even use it as a jumping off point.

As to the ethical problems, there’s just too many of us and we’re reproducing at an alarming rate. I don’t imagine there’s any style of eating that will get around that, and even if we could (for a little while) it would only be an illusory bandaid on the bigger, and even more uncomfortable issue of overpopulation. And personally, I think agriculture in general is a pretty bad idea for many reason, especially the power dynamic it puts us in with the earth, but again, in order for us to return to anything similar to hunter gatherer, there’d have to be a lot less of us, which would mean we’d either have to have a serious die-off or quit reproducing at this incredible rate. Or both.

I got a couple of questions:

If you eat low carb, do you eat meat at every meal? I just get really hungry if I don’t eat grains with my protein. I might be able to avoid that if I eat more meat more often but I’m not sure that is what I want to do, nor if the planet can afford us all to do that. Also, there seems to be a limit to how much meat I can eat in each meal, or in any day or week.

Is there any research on whole grains in a wholefood diet? I’m guessing (but haven’t looked yet) that pretty much all ‘low-carb’ research is being done comparing low carb to carb diets that are based on refined carbs not whole ones. Most people eat white flour and sugar, so it makes sense if they stop eating that their health will improve.

My ancestors ate whole oats, and before that barely for thousands of years. They adapted to that over a long period of time (unlike recently colonised indigenous cultures eg Maori, who eat refined carbs and haven’t had any time to adapt to grains, and have very high rates of diabetes etc). That’s a lot of time for genes to learn how to express in optimal ways. My ancestors also fermented their grains, and again I ask if there is any research on fermented, whole grains in the context of a wholefoods diet?

I totally accept that many people do better and well on low or no carb diets. Doesn’t mean we all do though and I’m concerned the baby is getting thrown out with the bath water.

I have these meals that I make sometimes that are apparently a low-carb/paleo nightmare Slow cooked brown rice; slow cooked root veges (usually parsnip and carrot) and/or pumpkin; some greens; tamari or salt; herbal vinegar; olive oil or butter. When I eat that particular combination I get the most amazing feeling of satiation, pleasure, and relaxation in my whole solar plexus/liver/gallbladder/stomach area, and great digestion. I don’t really get that with anything else, although rabbit stew brings a different kind of sensation. How can that be bad???

I recently made the commitment to eat as much meat as I need, providing that it comes from local organic or feral sources. However I still tell people that I am vegetarian, because I want to have a high degree of choice in how I eat animals. I don’t want to be eating meat from sources that are overly cruel to the animal or the planet. Being vegetarian has pretty much always been an ethical and spiritual practice for me rather than one focussed on physical health. Again I am concerned that the baby is being thrown out with the bath water. Having some meals as ‘vegetarian’ has many benefits for individuals, communities, and the planet.

Pounded steaks are yummy… we just had pounded venison stewed in a paprika sauce, it was heavenly.

In general, I totally agree about the canned food. I make an exception for fish because it’s nearly impossible to get fresh wild salmon. Otherwise, I try to avoid it, although of course we home can a ton of meat and veggies since we don’t have many other ways of preserving them.

If you buy high quality fish oil like Carlsons in bulk instead of capsules it actually tends to last a long time. We don’t have a fridge obviously, so we just keep the bottle in the pantry and it will last up to three or four months easily, although it doesn’t usually go unconsumed that long with four of us taking daily TB doses. Besides, it’s super easy to tell when either flax or fish oil go off, they usually have a pretty distinctive stink. And while it would be ideal to eat fresh fatty fish on a regular basis, that’s not necessarily affordible (or edible, depending on how the individual feels about fish) for a lot of people, and in some cases the oil is safer because it’s processed to remove any chemicals or mercury, as much as I dislike processing any food, I dislike mercury poisoning even more. I do agree about grinding your own flax though, it’s super easy and tastes great in food. When it comes to flax though, it’s so badly converted to omega 3s in the body (like pretty much all plant sources) that I don’t even bother with it for that use, I just like the taste and texture it gives for bread and pancakes.

I would love to trade for some seeds in the hopes they might actually grow…. we have good soil here but very hungry bugs and other critters that tend to eat up anything that actually manages to grow. On the upside, they all seem to hate everything from the mustard family so arugula, mustard, creasy greens and watercress do really great. I would especially love to try the kale and swiss chard. Let me know what you might like in trade!

A few things I’d like to add:
-Meat can be stretched: just got a thick steak (I’ve always been used to thin cuts in France) that I cut in 2 within the thickness and then pounded it so I ended with 2 decent size steaks .
-Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease so it’s best to switch to GF or even better paleo
-Avoid canned foods because they contain unhealthy chemicals: http://www.ewg.org/node/20934
-Fish oils and other omega 3 oils go rancid very quickly (there have been cases of poisoning in France due to rancid flaxseed oil which isn’t sold there anymore; try camelina oil instead, similar but much more stable). If you buy some, buy them refrigerated and use within 3 months. A better choice would be to eat fresh fatty fish and grind your own flax/camelina seeds.

Making the right choices surely require a lot of studying/research and being in tune with one’s body. Like many people, I also have to watch my finances but with right & nutritious foods choices, I don’t do too bad. I buy local and seasonal produces (even though I sometimes crave zucchinis or tomatoes) as much as I can and grow some greens and other stuff in containers on my porch. I also try to harvest wild goods when I can.

About nightshades (potatoes and the like), there are some I clearly avoid because I don’t digest them well (like bell pepper) and I try not to eat some too often. Potatoes don’t taste the same depending on how they’re grown and the ones from the farmers market (that I usually steam) taste the best…I saved one (which is sprouting) to grow my own potatoes this year (I never tried and read that it’s fairly easy).

Kiva, even though I have a small container garden, I have enough seeds for small farm! Especially seeds of greens (kales, collards, spinach, swiss chards…etc). I can send you some (trade or no trade, it doesn’t matter). Just let me know…